If you ask me, the problem with AA was severalfold...
The development was originally a way for the National Coal Board to say "look, we care", but Britannia Park did nothing but annoy residents, and that created a lot of ill feeling towards the place. Additionally, some of the work done by KLF (the owners of Britannia Park) and the NCB was shoddy, and resulted in subsidence (part of the reason for the closure of the wonderful top entrance, the other part being John Broome's desire for a one-level park).
Then there's the issue of advertising - the park never advertised itself very well, particularly in the mid-90s. This meant the park's target audience rarely expanded beyond the East Midlands. Seeing as Granada (now ITV plc.) owned them at that time, that really shouldn't have been the case!
The whole Adventure World thing in the late 90s was pure fantasy aswell... turn the place into Islands of Adventure (Universal Studios Complex, Florida) - that would have been amazing but with UK planning laws that could never have happened. A huge inverted rollercoaster (think Nemesis), a woodie to rival anything else in the UK - brilliant ideas but didn't even reach the council's planning board!
The real clincher though, was Ventureworld/THG (park's last owners) lack of foresight. They quickly realised that with minimal input the same relatively mediorce audience would return over and over... and then they realised that they realised that taking away a large chunk of their maintenance budget wouldn't have any immediate effect either... in the long term this absolutely devastated the park. It got to the point where 3 key rides (Rapids, Missile and Nightmare Niagara log flume) were unreliable and unlikely to pass their annual safety check. All three would have needed a sizable chunk of investment just to get them running for 2005... and THG didn't see the need.
So the park was literally forced to throw away Nightmare Niagara - probably the most popular attraction the park had during the summer. I literally cried when I saw them taking that thing apart. She really was on her last legs and was very poorly treated by the end - sizable hole's in her channel had been patched with something that looked suspiciously like Polyfilla.
The Missile also went; the park disposed of the one thing they would need to succeed again - their planning wedge. Any objections could have been met with "but it's not as tall/loud as The Missile" - with that gone they were at the planner's mercy.
The Shipley Lakeside site is _perfect_ for a theme park, and the basic infrastructure laid down by Britannia Park was very good. But with the Leisure industry the way it is and Merlin's (who own Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Legoland etc.) dominance over the theme park sector... I can't see it happening. Perhaps Cedar Fair will come over and rescue it. Perhaps I should keep dreaming
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